Ironically, too many people attending college is a problem.
by EricCartman (2024-02-22 16:36:20)

In reply to: We should incentivize more college graduates.  posted by kormal


The number of people with a bachelor's degree increased from 30.4% in 2011 to 37.9% in 2021, per the Pew study linked below. College graduates also are less likely to be unemployed vs High School graduates.

There are a couple of issues here, that I can see:

1) Not everyone needs to attend college. Pushing the "You must go to college" narrative is why kids end up in crappy colleges that have a negative ROI. Per the Pew study, only 46.4% of students that attend private for-profit colleges graduate in six years. At private non-for-profit school that number is 78.3% and 69% at public schools.

Graduating from UVA probably leads to a stable life. Graduating from a degree factory wastes four-to-six years of your life, probably puts you six figures in debt, and probably has a negative ROI. These kids would probably be better off attending a trade school or joining the military in a non-combat role to learn something tangible.

2) If kids graduate from High School without tangible life skills, then we need to rework what we teach in High School. We should not force kids into college to obtain enough knowledge to benefit society.

3) Most college degrees are not necessary to work in an office. A degree has become a screening tool, use to replace actually interviewing candidates, and certainly used to avoid training new hires. The good news is that this barrier to entry is slowly fading away (https://www.wsj.com/articles/help-wanted-no-degree-necessary-georgia-florida-skills-based-hiring-1e294181).

On the subject of assistance, I'm failing to understand why we need to help borrowers repay loans when they obtained an asset that generates hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income over their working life (and the gap between college and non-college earnings has only widened over time). An asset was obtained, and now we are asking society to eat the cost. That is the definition of privatizing the gains and socializing the losses.

In contrast, people that lack assets should receive assistance from the government. My preference is to couple assistance with the opportunity to learn a skill, so that the recipient can move up into a higher paying role and off of assistance. For this reason, I favor the EITC over direct cash payments.

Like most of our problems, we are attempting to cure the symptom, not the disease. I guess that is how the game works.




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